I really find that the hover-over text applies to me more often than not, unless I'm not in mixed company. This reminds me of a time that I was staying with a friend and she walked in on me changing the time on her microwave. When I explained to her that her microwave, stove, and coffee pot were all set to different times and it was bugging me, she just looked at me like I was crazy. --"grate314" (talk) 16:47, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that is what the title text meant. Also, anybody who reads an xkcd comic and remembers that they did that is crazy. --98.221.139.80

I agree with grate314. I have to fix this every time the power goes out in my house because the stove, microwave, and radio all treat power outages differently. Between different rooms, though, it doesn't bother me. --DanB (talk) 19:04, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I know that that isn't specifically what the hover-over text was talking about, but I was thinking of it in a more general way. I've just found that whenever someone asks me what I'm thinking about, it's best to say 'nothing'. What I meant by 'mixed company' is a general social gathering, like a wedding or birthday party. I'm an EE student, so when someone asks me that question at school, I answer honestly. The answer is usually 'soldering'. I think about soldering a lot. Thanks, DanB, the clocks were all on top of each other, btw, I'm not sure how she lived in that chaos.--grate314 (talk) 21:27, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Did anybody try doing what the title text is saying? Just wondering. --98.221.139.80

When I'm not following written instructions, I tend to use multiples of 1:11, out of laziness. So, if I figure something should take about 2-3 minutes, I'll nuke it for 2:22. That way, I can press one button 3 times without having to move my finger. MGK (talk) 17:23, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm lazy and like to use repeated digits rather than have to move my finger along to find the next one - thus 33, 55, 66 get used a lot. I also find that for most items, longer time at lower power settings is more effective at even heating, so I do a lot of 66 at 50% rather than 33 at 100%. Our current oven only has 10 power settings, unlike a previous one that had two digit power settings resulting in 66 sec at 55% being a fairly commonly used setup. Interestingly, the logic of every microwave oven I have encountered treats 99 entered in the seconds display the same as if one were to have entered 1minute and 33 seconds. Thus 99:99 would be 100 minutes and 33 seconds. J-beda (talk) 17:31, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it would make more sense to change the 10 minutes button to a 6 minutes button 212.23.140.110 16:39, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I usually just push the "add 30 seconds" button until I reach the desired time (6 pushes for three minutes, 3 for 1:30, etc.). Erenan (talk) 16:06, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

mine only has a single analogue dial that jumps up in increasingly large steps, and for some reason is numbered to skip over some sensible times, such as six minutes. however, no buttons, so problem solved. 86.15.83.223 22:00, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The 9 and 0 button are near each other so I do a lot of 90 (meaning 1 minute, 30 seconds). Sometimes, I'll get lazyer and press 99.

Quasar unit offers the additional accuracy/simplicity/utility of min 10, 1 and sec 10, 1 There are no other numbers on the control face, which has 14 buttons total. hmm, Minimum number of buttons required to accomplish nuking?--Idkrash (talk) 01:28, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

For simplicity I would be in favor of 2 dials and 2 buttons. The dials could serve for power and time, which could output to digital displays. The buttons then could serve as start and stop. Pressing start and stop simultaneously would toggle the clock set function and you could use the dials to set the min and hour.----Shine (talk) 10:47, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I suspect that sooner or later they'll all just have a power button and a touchscreen. Erenan (talk) 15:15, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Agreed that the touchscreen is likely but you could get away with just the two dials by having the time dial start the oven when it is pulled out and stop when pushed in. (#Analog) --DanB (talk) 19:18, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

My microwave already has a touch screen... we use the 30 second button on it a lot... --Tustin2121 (talk) 16:36, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

As a datum-point, my microwave has a (linear, clockwork, with mechanical bell-ding) dial, which is imprecise enough. Also it's a really old one (20 years old? 25? 30?) with a lower power than is common to see mentioned, so I look at the packaging recommendations, see perhaps 650W, 750W and 850W times, or 700W and 800W ones, and then add half again onto the lower rate's required time, and then perhaps a little more for good luck, as the amount I (roughly) twist the dial. I rarely use anything other than 'full'-power, out of the five settings. And I still sometimes need to renuke after testing. I really ought to get a new one. Probably would be more efficient, as well as accurate. ;) 178.98.141.216 13:07, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Search

Navigation

Tools

It seems you are using noscript, which is stopping our project wonderful ads from working. Explain xkcd uses ads to pay for bandwidth, and we manually approve all our advertisers, and our ads are restricted to unobtrusive images and slow animated GIFs. If you found this site helpful, please consider whitelisting us.